Approaching the Challengers
by Harbringer of Insanity
Summary: Before the new fighters moved into the Smash Castle and joined the tournament, even before their introduction trailer, they had to be invited. Here their invitations are gathered.


As slowly the sky turned dark and the moon started rising, the village went to sleep.

All was quiet until the loud rambling and shrieking brakes of an arriving train pierced through the night. Normally the trains just passed through the village without making much sound, but this train not only stopped, but did so with enough noise to wake everyone in town. Although the noise itself was strange enough, what was stranger was that the train seemed quite new, and so shouldn't be making that much sound. It almost seemed as if the train wanted to make sure its arrival wouldn't go unnoticed.

A single passenger got out of the train and entered the station. Porter, the train station attendant, still half asleep looked at the man and startled awake at his posture.

He was a large man, even more so from Porter's point of view, wearing a white suit and gloves. His skin was pale and his hair was pure white.

He walked towards the entrance of the train station and looked outside. Slowly, the village people had gathered near the station, although they kept a fair distance away from it. Although curious about what was happening, they were not used to anything unusual happening in their village and worried about what was going on. They truly grew uneasy when they saw the large man, towering even above the largest amongst the small crowd.

"Greetings, people of New Leaf, and I'm glad that you've all come to greet me as well," the man said in a low, booming voice. He seemed completely unaware of the unease of the villagers. "I'm looking for your mayor. I have some good news for him."

A gray bear stepped forward, "I'm Curt, the deputy mayor. The mayor isn't here … I think he's still asleep." He laughed sheepishly. "You wouldn't believe how deep he can sleep."

"Mmph, I thought I had made that train make enough noise to wake a Snorlax,' the man muttered to himself, "well, I really need to speak to him, if any of you would be so kind as to fetch him for me it would be duly appreciated."

The villagers didn't know how fast they could get away after this request, although eventually it was the sky-blue wolf, Skye, who had stood at the outer edges of the crowd, that managed to get away far enough to be considered the one who would get the mayor.

"Hugh, Hugh, wake up!" she yelled, in the meanwhile nearly breaking down the door.

"Whazzad?" the boy who poked his head out of the door said, clearly just having been ripped out of dreamland. The boy, who was currently wearing a pajama and had a major case of a bed head, tried his best to keep his eyes open and listen to what Skye had to say.

"Hugh, you must come with me. There's someone here to speak to you."

Hugh suppressed a yawn while asking: "W-w-whooo?"

"A large, scary man in a white suit. He said that he was looking for the mayor because he had 'good news' for him."

"What!" the boy asked shocked, "wait here!" he said as he ran back inside. Seconds later, he came out again, his hair straightened out and now wearing a red shirt and black shorts. "Bring me to him!"

Skye, although puzzled at her friends sudden change of mood, shrugged and led him to the train station. When they arrived they found the man, still standing at the same spot, with the villagers surrounding him in a large circle. Hugh quickly approached the man, not feeling any of the fear his neighbours did, instead he was excited and anxious to talk to the large figure to talk to him.

"Ah, Hugh, it's good to see you. I have go…"

"Can I come, can I really come and join them?" Hugh asked, excitedly interrupting him.

The man chuckled slightly at the young boy's excitement and said: "Yes, Hugh, you can come with me to the castle."

"And what about me not being cut out to be a fighter, that I wouldn't really fit in?"

"I'm certain that that could easily be solved with some creative thinking, don't you think?"

Hugh was nearly jumping up and down out of excitement by now and his neighbours, who couldn't hear what they were talking about, were confused at his reaction to the scary man. Isabelle, his secretary, walked out of the crowd towards him and asked: "Hugh, are you okay? Who is this man?"

Hugh turned around, a grin nearly splitting his face, and hugged her. "I couldn't be better, Isabelle." He let her go and pointed at the man, "This is Master Hand, the organizer of the tournaments I told you about."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance." Master Hand said, nodding his head slightly.

"H-H-Hello," she stuttered, trying to hide herself behind Hugh, who was still completely oblivious to her fear. "W-w-what brings y-y-you to our b-beau-beautiful town?"

"He has invited me to join his tournament!" Hugh answered for Master Hand, "I will finally be able to meet my idols!"

Isabelle wasn't sure how to react. She knew that it was a long time dream of Hugh to meet his idols and he talked about it quite often, but on the other hand …

"Doesn't that mean that you will have to leave town?" Skye asked. Isabelle startled and looked back and saw that the crowd had moved closer to them, curious to see what they were discussing and encouraged by Isabelle moving forward.

"Oh, yeah, I guess so," Hugh said, his excitement visibly decreasing, "I could always come and visit here, right?" he asked Master Hand.

"Off course, although I'm afraid you can't go too often,' he answered, "sorry, castle policies. You will have to delegate official duties to someone else."

"Uhm, Curt, could you…?" Hugh asked the grey bear.

"Off course, Old Dog," the bear answered, visibly choking up.

By now, the whole crowd had fully caught up on what was going to happen and everyone was showing a different degree of sadness. Several of the villagers were crying, either loudly or silent, while others stayed stronger and remained much off there calm, although they too seemed sad. The shopkeepers, despite having less contact with Hugh, too looked upset. The Able sisters were off in a corner consoling each other, as were Reese and Cyrus. Blathers was patting his crying sister on her back while looking as if he was on the verge of crying too. Tom Nook was hugging his crying cousins and Brewster … looked the practically the same as ever, although he too was giving off an upset vibe. Harriet, Leif and Kicks all had a look off sadness on their face and Resetti was refusing to show his sadness and kept looking grumpy.

"Hey guys! Why all the sad faces? I'm not dying, right? Plus, I won't be gone forever and I can always come and visit," Hugh encouraged his neighbours, although he seemed sad as well.

"You're right, we should be happy for you, shouldn't we?" Skye said, smiling through her tears.

"It's just that it won't be same without you and we're going to miss you dearly," Julian said. It should be noted that the blue unicorn had easily out cried all the other villagers.

"And I am going to miss all off you guys too, but I simply can't let this opportunity go," Hugh said, his eyes watering up. He turned to Master Hand, "When do we have to leave, I … I want to say goodbye."

"Off course, we'll leave in about an hour or so, if that's good with you? You should also make sure you have everything with you," the deity answered.

Hugh turned back to the crowd and said: "Neighbours, friends, before I will say goodbye to all off you in person I want to say that I will miss you guys and that I love you al dearly, and that I could never have gotten here without you guys."

He first turned to Julian, "Julian, stay cool."

Julian smiled sadly and nodded, "Always. You stay cool too, understood?"

Hugh mirrored his smile and hugged him.

This went on for a while, with lots of tears, smiles, greetings, hugs, handshakes and other such things, with Hugh going from person to person and giving everyone time to say their goodbyes, some long, others short, until there were only two left.

"Isabelle," Hugh said while hugging her, "I know that you can keep this place going on without me with some help from Curt. Hang in there for me, please."

Isabelle merely nodded after Hugh let her go, unable to say anything without bursting into tears.

Lastly, he turned to Skye, who still looked somewhat sad. He hugged her and whispered in her ear: "You have no idea how much I'm going to miss you."

"I do, and will too," the sky-blue wolf answered.

Hugh stopped hugging her and stepped back in surprise. Skye merely smiled shyly, after which he smiled widely back at her and hugged her again.

After a few moments he let her go, " I… I need to get my stuff."

"I'll help you," she said, following him to his house. After five minutes they came out, Hugh having filled his pocket with the stuff that he thought he might need.

"You ready?" Master Hand asked Hugh, after the latter had returned to the group. Hugh looked around and nodded, "Yeah, I'm ready to go."

"Very well," the pale man said, bringing his hands together, "Let's board the train, then, shall we?"

He started moving towards the station, Hugh following him. Halfway there Hugh stopped, turned around and waved at the crowd. "Bye guys." Then he moved along and boarded the train, his friends waving him goodbye.

After a few moments the train left the station, silent as a breeze.

* * *

**Author Notes: Well, a new story. Hurray! Perhaps I will actually be updating this regularly. But nevermind that, let's move on to some slightly more interesting things. First off, I've been planning on making a series about the newcomers for a while now, and this is the first chapter! Aren't you as excited as I am!? No ... ah well, guess that I can't win them all. **

**Secondly, I will be making the chapters in no particular order what so ever, so don't be surprised when the next chapter is about Little Mac or Greninja (psst, it may not actually be about either of these two)**

**Thirdly, I promise the other chapters will have more humor, in this one it simple felt more appropriate to make the whole saying goodbye more touching and sad, as the Villager, (obviously) named Hugh in my headcanon, had quite a few people he would be leaving behind, people who he interacted with daily, people who he cared about deeply, very deeply in some cases ... I can escertain you guys that VillagerxSkye will be the only ship for now, with the possible exception of the obvious ones like MarioxPeach or LinkxZelda, and that I won't be really doing a lot with it, as I'm not very good at writing romance.**

**Fourthly(?), the village Hugh comes from is based on my own village, New Wing, and all the villagers shown in the story are actual neighbours of mine, except Julian, who has moved out a while ago :(**

**Fifthly (I promise this will be it), I hope you people like the personality I have chosen for Hugh. Instead of having him be a psychotic axe crazy maniac, I will have him be a fanboy gushing over basically all the Smashers, with just a hint of psychotic axe crazy maniac (I'm still the Harbringer of Insanity).**

**Anyway, that's all for now. R&R please!**


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